Page 38 of Forever Then

Chapter Thirty-Two

I’LL KEEP TALKING

Connor

The air in the hotel room settles heavy and tense as Gretchen waits for me to begin.

I lower my voice and start softly. “That summer Drew and I visited, things were…different. You were so unexpected and so pretty and it threw me. You’d meant so much to me before I left and then I was back after four years, feeling all these new things, but I couldn’t act on them because you were sixteen. ”

“So, you proceeded to ignore me for a month.”

I throw out my arms. “It was all I knew to do. Every time you were around, I wanted to be closer and I-I…couldn’t.”

She slaps away a tear. “You couldn’t even be my friend?” The whispered words—the pain there—have my arms straining at my sides, aching to hold her. “If I hadn’t run into you by the pool that night, you would have left the next morning without a word.”

I take in a long breath, chin dropped to my chest. “I had already promised Drew that he could trust me not to cross that line with you. ”

Her eyes flare before narrowing. Expressions of confusion, frustration and anger sweep over her face as she mentally recounts that whole visit, looking for the pieces she missed.

“As it turns out,” I continue, “I didn’t do a good enough job of ignoring you because Drew sensed something.”

Mouth pulled into a tight line, anger tenses her jaw.

“It’s not his fault, Gretch. You were sixteen, he’s your brother and he was only looking out for you.”

“What did you tell him?” she grits through clenched teeth, voice unsteady.

“I told him he had nothing to worry about. That you were just a kid and that I cared about you the way he does. I promised him I’d look out for you.”

She wants to run—I see it in the tears welled in her eyes, her hands and feet that she can’t keep still. But I won’t let her run from this. She deserves to know everything.

“And that’s how you see me, isn’t it? Just a kid,” she says.

“Not now, of course not! But then…I…What the hell was I supposed to say? He caught me staring out the kitchen window at you! In your green two-piece, braid hanging over your shoulder, running your hand through the floppy hair of some asshole kid who was one cannonball away from getting my fist in his face.”

Her gaze bores into me, steady as steel. Every warring emotion comes to a halt as she remembers.

I remember it all; every detail.

“So, yeah, I told him it was nothing. I told him he could trust me. He asked me to promise.” I shrug. “And I promised.”

“And the black eye?”

“It’s like I said: the punch wasn’t intended for me, but the message was that you were off-limits.”

Animosity creeps into her features again—the same thing that appears every time I mention her brother.

“Gretchen, please understand that Drew was only trying to prot?—”

“He was only trying to protect me!” she shouts.

“Yeah, you’ve made that as abundantly clear as the fact that I was sixteen.

I get it.” Her outburst gives way to a softer plea.

“But I wasn’t sixteen when we talked for a year.

” Softer now. “And I wasn’t sixteen at Drew’s rehearsal dinner.

” Barely a whisper. “I wasn’t sixteen when you kissed me. ”

Her hurt scars my own wounded heart anew. I drag a hand through my hair then down my face. The damage I’ve done, the pain I’ve caused— dammit , I’m a sick bastard for making her carry this for three years.

“Connor!” she demands and all I can do is brace myself for what comes next. “Is he the reason you invited her?”

“Yes,” I choke out. Her body deflates. Agony settles in my bones and I refuse to try and escape the pain because I deserve it.

“Explain, please.”

I remember how close we were then, how I grossly mishandled that whole weekend and the months that followed—it all amounts to a series of the worst things I’ve ever done. Even though I want to, I can’t stop here.

So, I keep talking. “From that first message you sent me at the beginning of that year, I was yours. I know that sounds ridiculous and I can’t explain it, but it’s true.

Every message, every text, every phone call, every video chat…

Gretchen, I lived for the next time I would get to talk to you.

I’d moved into my own place by then and, I don’t know, maybe it was the distance from Drew that gave me a false sense of confidence that you could be mine someday. ”

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“My plan going into Drew’s wedding weekend was to talk to you about the possibility of us. ”

Every tear that cascades down her cheeks is a single shred of my heart being ripped away—death by a thousand cuts. God help me, I’m crying, too, and I don’t even try to stop it.

“When you walked into that rehearsal dinner, I knew it would always be you and nobody else.

“I wanted to take you on that date. I wanted to drive you back to school to help you move in. I wanted to hop on a plane to New York every other weekend to see you. And I thought—” My voice cracks. “ I thought if we both were sure of each other then we would talk to Drew together.”

At last, she meets my eyes, cheeks streaked with tears to match my own. “I would have said yes. To all of it,” she breathes.

I know. That’s why it was so hard to walk away.

“Tell me what happened. And don’t sugar coat it to make Drew look good. Tell me the truth.”

While there’s a small part of me that struggles to say anything bad about her brother, I can’t deny the woman standing in front of me.

“Drew didn’t want Mav or any of our old college crew making passes at you, so he pulled me aside after dinner and asked me to keep them away.” Every muscle in her body goes taut. “And I told him that I thought he was going overboard, but?—”

“Let me get this straight,” she interrupts, indignation brewing. “It was just assumed that I couldn’t handle myself with a bunch of twenty-five-year-old man-children?”

“He didn’t mean it like?—”

“Stop defending him!”

“I’m not defending him,” I shout back. “I’m telling you how it was.

He knew what kind of guys they were. Hell, I was one of them, Gretchen!

” I move a step closer now. “The guy who looks for the one-night-stand instead of long term commitment. The guy who wakes up the next morning and can’t remember the name of the woman lying next to him. ”

Shaking her head, she cries, “I never cared about your past, Connor! That’s not who you are!”

“With you! With you I wasn’t that person! For that year, I only saw you. I only talked to you. I only thought about you. But Drew didn’t know that.”

“Why does Drew’s opinion matter more than mine?”

I stop, chest swelling with a heavy breath.

All I’ve ever tried to do is be a good friend. To not betray Drew’s trust. To not come between him and his sister. But has all of that been at the expense of Gretchen’s agency in the matter?

“What he says goes because I’m just the little sister, right? Who cares what I want or if I get crushed in the process as long as Drew’s the hero saving me from the big bad frat boy.” She huffs out a disgusted breath. “You know what, you don’t need to tell me the rest, I know enough.”

I move in closer. “Stop, no,” I say. Her hand comes up and I skitter to a halt.

“No! You stop, Connor. Whether or not we were together was a decision for you and I to make. Not Drew. You let him decide and you didn’t even consult me! Then you went and invited her and apparently that’s all Drew’s fault, too.”

“I let Drew get in my head and I shouldn’t have,” I say hoarsely. “I fucked up. I thought that—” I shake my head to try and rid myself of the shame. “I thought if I could distance myself from you that would hurt you less in the end. God , it sounds so shitty when I hear myself say it out loud.”

“And Drew’s why you left me on that balcony?”

“Walking away from you was the worst decision of my life, Gretch.” I take a chance and step closer. This time she doesn’t stop me. “I can’t even count the number of mistakes I made that weekend and since, but kissing you was not one of them.”

Her eyes soften—she wants so badly to believe me. But the tense arms crossed over her front like a shield tell a different story—she’s terrified I’ll hurt her again.

“If that’s true, why didn’t you call? Why did you start seeing someone else?”

Instinct takes over as I reach for her, but she leans away. “Please, don’t. Just answer the question.”

I work my jaw a few times. “I must have picked up the phone to call a thousand times. I know it’s not an excuse, but I was so ashamed.

You were in every thought of every minute of every day.

I couldn’t even escape you when I slept because you were in my dreams, too.

” I pause, calling forth the memories of the darkest time of my life.

“I think I was depressed. The more I tried to drown my sorrows in alcohol, the worse it got until I didn’t even recognize myself.

I honestly thought that even if I got a second chance, there was no way I could ever be good enough for you.

” I swat a tear away. “When Drew told me you decided not to come home for Thanksgiving, I knew. You told him it was because it was too expensive to travel, but I knew it was because of me. I turned into the worst version of myself after that. I never told Drew why I was such a mess, but he saw the mess, Gretch.”

The tears fall relentlessly. Hers. Mine. Ours.

“I don’t regret you. I could never. Everything I felt for you then didn’t just disappear.

Distance, alcohol, ignorance, other women…

it doesn’t matter what I tried. None of them were you .

And I’m a selfish bastard who walked into a restaurant two months ago, convinced that I could handle seeing you again.

That three years was enough time to move on. But it wasn’t. Not even close.

“Because I’ll never move on. It will always be you.”

Always. Forever. I know down to the deepest part of my soul that it’s Gretchen for me or nobody at all.